Little Red Flags

Ron Gardenhire has what he considers the perfect plan for reviewing close calls in baseball: red flags that managers throw like in the NFL . . .

. . . “I’ve said it all along, I want a red flag,” Gardenhire said Tuesday. “If you use it and you’re wrong, you don’t get the red flag the rest of the game. But if you use it and you’re right, you get your red flag back. … Last night would have been a great red flag game. I could have thrown it out there and then they could have run and checked the replay. It would have been perfect.

“Football has a red flag. Why can’t we? Keep it in my sock like they do.”

I’ve cited this rule so often that it probably needs some official name — maybe “The Carlin Rule” — but in the meantime: if you have an idea to improve baseball, and your reasoning in support of it requires you to cite football’s adoption of said idea, it is ipso facto a bad idea.

UPDATE: Oops, I hadn’t realized until after I posted this that Neyer had already hit in it earlier today, complete with Carlin reference. He’s a smart guy, that Neyer. Gonna have a future in this business if he plays his cards right.

Comments

I disagree Greg. As both Craig and Rob point out, Carlin nailed the fact that football and baseball are diametrically opposed in nearly every single way. It’s not that the NFL, or football in general, is bad, it’s that the games are so different that justifying a change in one game based on its success in the other is ludicrous. In other words, the change to baseball’s rules needs to be justified in terms of baseball, not in terms of the NFL, NBA, NHL or whatever other sport.

I’m not arguing that MLB should adopt ideas from the NFL simply because they work in the NFL. I’m arguing that we shouldn’t reject ideas simply because they work in the NFL.

Re-reading Craig’s post, I do think I took it a bit wrong, but I still stand by my comments; don’t say “no” just because the NFL says “yes.” (Leave that to the Dems and GOP.) And I think (hope?) there’s a bit of snark and hyperbole in all these comments.

I do agree “the change to baseball’s rules needs to be justified in terms of baseball,” and I love the Carlin routine.

Automatically rejecting an idea just because the NFL is doing it is bad reasoning. Not sure if it’s ipso facto or not – I’m not that familiar with Latin – but it’s still bad reasoning, even if Neyer says it.